When Lisa Mitchell contacted Health Impact News in 2016 about the medical kidnapping of her son Samuel, she recounted horrific acts of abuse that her son suffered at the hand of El Pueblo Boys and Girls Ranch, where he was forced to stay by Child Protective Services for 6 years. Now, that facility has been shut down by the state of Colorado - permanently.
It is a measure of vindication for the Mitchells and other families who suffered at El Pueblo, but the years that they lost can never be replaced.
Lisa reports that the children were drugged, abused, and starved - "treated like guinea pigs for profit." Children got into trouble for sneaking food, but they were hungry.
Children were put into restraints and illegal holds. While several news reports about El Pueblo allude to fights between the residents, Lisa said that it went much deeper than that. She alleged that the staff would drug the kids, then pit them against each other to fight - much like cock fights or dog fights, only with children.
While Samuel was in the facility, Lisa says that they broke his arm, his foot, and his leg. Her son was already on 6 psychotropic medications at age 6.
The private, non-profit organization has been in operation for 57 years. Among its board members are a police chief, a judge, pharmaceutical reps, bankers, and realtors.
Lisa Mitchell is asking the questions of how deep the conflicts of interests run among those involved with El Pueblo. Who made money at the children's expense?
She says that her son’s Guardian ad Litem (GAL) once told Samuel: "You’re worth a lot of money."
Lisa Mitchell is very thankful that the facility which caused such harm to her son has finally been permanently shut down. She says that the Child Protective System and the health care system is "trafficking children." Now, she wants to see the people who are responsible for the rampant abuse shut down.

An Alamosa judge has ordered a new trial in the case of Krystal Voss, who was convicted in 2004 of child abuse in the death of her nineteen-month-old son and sentenced to twenty years in prison. The reversal is another setback for advocates of "shaken baby syndrome," a diagnosis that's been used in court to prosecute hundreds of caregivers for abuse over the past three decades but has been attacked by skeptics as junk science.
In a 139-page opinion dated August 7, Alamosa District Court Judge Pattie Swift ruled that Voss's conviction should be thrown out because her attorneys at trial failed to summon any medical experts to challenge the prosecution's claim that Kyran Gaston-Voss's death was the result of a violent shaking. The decision comes after new testimony by nationally recognized pediatric specialists that the toddler's injuries, including a devastating brain injury, could have been caused by an accidental fall.
At trial, the prosecution's medical expert asserted that the fatal injuries were consistent with a violent shaking. The jury took only six hours to deliver its verdict: guilty of knowing and reckless child abuse resulting in death.
Yet the basic premises behind shaken-baby prosecutions — for example, that baby-shaking produces a unique constellation of symptoms, distinct from a short fall — have been under attack for some time, and were even back when Voss went to trial. Dr. Robert Bux, the coroner who conducted the autopsy on Kyran, told Westword in 2003 that he didn't believe in shaken-baby syndrome and found it "difficult to swallow the concept." Yet the defense never called him as a witness to refute the prosecution's medical expert.
Voss, has already served thirteen years of her now-vacated twenty-year sentence.

"We just want to raise our daughter. Is that too much to ask?"
Juanita and TJ Muhl are a Colorado couple who are grieving over Yechezkela, their infant daughter nicknamed Yael, who was taken from them while still in the hospital by the State of Colorado. The parents are well-educated, and each is employed.
Yechezkela was born prematurely with many medical conditions. Her parents are Messianic Jews and at times requested kosher equivalents of medications, which are available. As loving parents, they wanted to be involved in the medical decisions regarding their daughter.
On March 5, the Colorado Department of Human Services was granted an emergency custody order to seize Yael. The parents were removed from Yael’s hospital. On that same day, the hospital was granted a court order to give Yael medicines for acid reflux--- which were allegedly not even necessary according to the hospital’s own records.
By May 19, the Muhls discovered that the foster family could stay at the hospital with Yael, but her natural parents were no longer allowed to stay by her side.

"Pray for my babies’ safety. Pray for their hearts & souls. Several of them were sexually abused & 1 was mentally abused when they were taken for only a few hours/days last year. Pray for peace. Pray that they won't be separated."
An anguished Claire Rembis cries out after learning that her children were being taken into state custody by Colorado CPS and police, where they had been visiting a friend. Simultaneously her husband William Rembis was being arrested on what she says are "bogus" charges in Texas. The children were all transported back to Lubbock Texas from Colorado, and Texas CPS has allegedly severed their parental rights, as this homeschool family's nightmare continues.

When 6 year old Samuel Mitchell had difficulties in school stemming from a brain injury at birth, his mother sought help. Eventually, Child Protective Services of Colorado decided that they could do a better job of caring for Samuel, and they seized him from his family and locked him away in a facility where they turned him into a medical guinea pig. He spent years being heavily drugged, and when his mother and the ACLU investigated and exposed some of the corruption, there was retaliation.
Lisa lost her son's childhood to a state that profited from years of drugging him. Her son's Guardian ad Litem (GAL) once told Samuel: "You're worth a lot of money."
But now, Lisa has gained access to years of records and is blowing the whistle on the state, revealing a corrupt drugs-for-profit system that capitalizes on children seized by CPS and put into the foster care system.

Disability advocates are infuriated about a case involving a nonverbal woman with disabilities who they say is being held hostage by Jefferson County in Colorado.
"It is truly outrageous," said Julie Reiskin, director of the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition. "I call this torture."
County officials have assumed temporary guardianship over 36-year-old Sharisa Kochmeister, a college graduate, and removed her from her home and her father — the only person in Colorado who helps her communicate.
They placed her in a nursing home and forbid her family, friends and even her doctor from visiting her, according to people close to the situation.
"You take someone who is nonverbal, who is dependent on one person for communicating, and you remove that ... this makes me so mad," said Reiskin. "This is part of not understanding a population. You put them in an institution against their will with a bunch of people who have dementia. This is torture."